ORANGE BEACH, Ala. – When Sportsman Marina General Manager Brian Wells looks due east from the second story of the dock store he sees, beyond a few boats in dry dock being cleaned and serviced, the frame work for a huge tiki bar going up.

When it’s completed it will be one of the newest waterfront hangouts, but in reality it will be one of the oldest on Pleasure Island. At least its construction will be.

When Wells looks south from the balcony he sees a bunch of empty boat slips. About 150 or so. He hopes the combination of water access and tiki bar will bring in the customers when the bar opens, hopefully early in the summer season.

““We’re really just wanting to sell bushwhackers.” he said with a grin. “A beach wear friendly, flip flops, no shoes, whatever, come over and have drink. We’ll be the closest bushwhacker machine to the islands. You can come straight across. It’s a good fit.”

The menu will be small at first – just eight items or so – consisting of hot dogs, nachos, sandwiches and nine-inch pizzas.

The marina is running a contest online for future customers to name the bar and as of this weekend nearly 600 names had been submitted. The winning entry will receive a $1,500 gift certificate to spend at the marina.

The construction of the building will be an authentic tiki hut straight from the islands and waterfronts of the Caribbean.

“The actual structure, the technical term, is palapa,” Wells said. “What research that I’ve done on it is of Mayan descent and has roots to the Mayans and the Mexican Caribbean and the western Caribbean.”

Sportsman has had the OK to build a restaurant since 2005 and Wells has been weighing his options since. A traditional restaurant would have been too much expense and too big a risk. Besides, Shipps Harbour is already operating successfully on the west side of the property.

Another option would have been a portable bar which would have cost about $200,000 to bring in and put decking for seating around it.

Then Wells found the palapa, which is not only different in look but in technique as well.

“We decided if we’re going to spend the money we were going to build something,” he said. “I went to the Oar House at the Bahia Mar Marina, they’ve got a dining room that’s a palapa structure and I talked to them and they got me in touch with Leo Folse of Tiki Isle Art out of Gulf Breeze.

“So I got with Leo (Folse) and said let’s build an open air, a real palapa structure right there on the water. There’s nothing like that in Orange Beach. Nothing that’s actually an authentic tiki bar.”

It all starts with the king pole.

“It’s just all triangulated to where that center post can’t move once it’s all locked together with the posts underneath it,” Wells said.” It’s just a big trellis. The king post is what the whole structure is built off of.”

The bottom of the structure, the decking and pilings, are pretty much traditional construction. But then Folse’s company takes over from there.

“It’s all hand done,” Wells said. “Once the king post and the commons and the hip rafters are put in, everything else from there is done by hand. Literally ropes lift the logs up there and when they start backing he has a block and tackle deal where they just bundle 10 leaves at a time. He says it’s fastest to do it by hand.”

Even the logs were hand picked by Folse and stripped by hand.

“That’s why they build them in the bush,” Wells said. “It doesn’t take a lot of brains. It’s all labor. The logs are all stripped by hand, they are hand hewed. They are stripped with a crow’s foot and a hammer to get most of the bark off of there. Then they come back with a draw knife and sit on the log and strip the rest of the bark off.

“After that’s done they sand it with a four-inch grinder. That’s two, two and a half weeks of just peeling bark off.”

Since the logs are cypress, they won’t need treating with chemicals, but will weather to give the place even more character.

The thatch roof will be made from 15,000 to 18,000 leaves and when completed will be 18 to 24 inches thick, Wells said. It should last 15 to 17 years.

The roof offers another technique developed in the islands to weather storms.

“The way the leaves are weaved, at a certain wind velocity the wind just goes through them,” Wells said. “The Caribbean is where they developed this type of structure so that when the wind comes, they lose a few leaves. All the stuff that’s in it may be in the backyard, but they still have the structure.”

The footprint is basically a 40-foot square building. Inside will be a rectangular bar with seating for dining placed around the room. Some walls will have tables attached to them and the corners will provide storage, space for utilities, waitress stations and a stage for live music.

“It’s not so much money where we can’t keep it in house and run it like we run the marina,” Wells said. “It’s kind of an asset. My boss is looking at it like a break even, but I want more than a break even or I wouldn’t be going through it.

“I think that we’re building something that’s going to be very unique and somewhat of an iconic structure here in Orange Beach.”